What will supermarket of future be like?

Will the retail shop of the future look much like the typical retail shop of today?

I suspect that we may see as big a change as is the comparison between the present-day supermarket and the grocery shop where I worked on Saturday mornings in my pre-teens: long counter, "pre-packaging" limited to the paper bags of broken biscuits I had the job of making up from the biscuit tins bought cheaply because they might have fallen over in the van (The good biscuits were kept aside for sale at full price.)

Deliveries have changed dramatically. No longer is there a steady stream of trucks from multiple manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers. The trucks which deliver are mainly those contracted to the retail chain; the few individuals are local and usually perishable goods.

The manufacturers now make in fewer places and will, for example, deliver to a very few, very large distribution centres. Basically distribution is now handled by the supermarket chains and a product delivered to one of those may end up anywhere in the region.

The plan, by at least one major retail chain, and others seem to be following the same line, is that for all fast turnover products, the "shelves" will be stacked at the distribution centres and just moved in with hand-lift electric trolleys into place in the aisles.

I asked some time ago about the remaining product when a shelf unit section is near empty and needs replacing. It seems either there will be two identical shelf sections so the last remaining products are moved to fill spaces in that, or when the old shelf section is moved out, the remaining products are the first used to fill the new one, so a few local filling staff will still be needed.

Some smaller retail chains may use a rudimentary form of this for soft drinks, dog food, etc. but they tend to be closer to following the old half-case style of cutting open cartons, many of which are then removed when empty by customers to replace non-available plastic bags.

Not all developments are exclusive to the big chains. Our local independent supermarket is one of those using automated shelf pricing: the updated prices are sent via slight voltage variations in the fluorescent lights to the electronic price label units clipped to the shelves. I've spoken to one of the repair technicians and to the manager, and understand that while the system works fairly well, there can be some problems from the electricity supply being less consistent than it used to be. And printed price labels, especially for discounts, are still far more effective.

The automated units display the unit pricing as well as the actual price. This information is somewhat small black on green screen the size of those on an old-style mobile phone: Item description small; price large; unit pricing small. Both description and unit pricing will scroll if necessary.

I think this may have been an Australian invention but there are also advances in this field and the latest kinds (which I have not yet seen in Australia) replace the dot matrix LCD screen with an eInk format similar (but a lot smaller) to the Kindle ebook reader sold by Amazon.

Only this week the first colour eink ebook reader (no disturbing backlighting needed) was shown at the current Consumer Electronics Show in the US. So colour electronic price labels in supermarkets could come very soon.

This will also allow product icons to be shown instead of just a description. There have also been versions with a loop aerial on the ceiling above the aisle instead of using the fluorescent light circuitry.

Back in the 1930s there were attempts to completely automate the early supermarkets and I suspect that the present day attempts to encourage use of self-service checkouts will not succeed beyond their use by those having a very small number of items which they have bought previously.

Maybe a few more consumers need to learn that one of the most effective ways of making a point that you do not like certain methods is to leave the goods at the checkout if service is not what you expect and buy them again at the competitor nearby. I've heard more than the usual sense of urgency to the appeal to one of the few remaining shelf fillers to return items from a particular checkout. My guess is that they would have included some frozen items. Any retailer who has this happen as often as once in a blue moon needs to take a look at their service methods.

If we are fortunate we may see slightly less emphasis on price and discount vouchers and more on service. Could there yet be a supermarket in Australia which employs staff to help a shopper take a substantial trolley load to the car?